On Tuesday evening, the Lake Braddock baseball team traveled to Hanover High School with thoughts of bouncing the Hawks from the state tournament. However, it was Mayers, Mayers & Associates who quickly foreclosed on any dreams the Bruins had of walking away with a win.

With bases loaded in the bottom of the first, Eric Mayers came just shy of cashing in on a grand slam when his shot to right bounced off the yellow cap on the wall and came back onto the playing field.  “I hit it a little bit off the handle and I didn’t know if it was going to go or not,” he said. However, Mayers made it to second and cleared the bases for a 3-0 lead.

Meanwhile on the mound, older brother Jake closed the door on the Bruin offense and held them scoreless in a 4-0 Hawk win.

“That’s Jake being Jake,” Hanover head coach Charlie Dragum said of Jake Mayers’ performance. “He’s the money guy. He pounded that strike zone. We got that lead and he did a great job pitching with it.”

Jake Mayers served up a three-up / three-down address to the Lake Braddock offense through the first two innings of play before yielding his first hit of the night to Keegan Halley in the top of the third. However the next three Bruin batters went down in order and Mayers did not give up another hit until Ryan Lindemuth sent a shot up the middle to start off the fourth. Lindemuth stole second on a pitch in the dirt and advanced to third on a Bobby Klien single through the gap at short. By Mayers struck out Kenny Towns, Andrew Weidinger and Ryan Owens to preserve the shutout.

“I may have got out of my motion a little bit,” Mayers said. “In the middle of the game my curveball was going in the dirt a little bit. I wasn’t getting on top of it at well.”

In the fifth, Mayer and the Hawks retired the order but the Bruins came back to threatened in the top of the sixth. Michael Nebrich dropped a single into short left to lead off. When Lindemuth sent a shot at Hanover short stop Beau Flinchum the Hawks nearly pulled off a double play. Flinchum got the force on Nebrich at second and his throw reached first baseman Austin Erb’s glove microseconds after Lindemuth touched the bag.

Towns next sent a deep shot to right that somehow bounced out of the glove of Eric Mayers to put two Bruin runners on base.

But once again Jake Mayers stepped it up on the mound getting a strike-out of Klien and Weidinger to ground out to second to close out the Bruins’ half of the inning.

“Good pitchers, they do that,” Dragum said.

Dragum said he considered pulling Mayers but his senior starter wanted to finish what he started. “He got to around a 100 pitches there in the last inning and we wanted to pull him and he begged and wanted to keep hitting,” Dragum said. “I had a hard time arguing with him there. I thought he was throwing the ball harder there in the seventh than he was in the first and the second.”

Despite any adversity he faces, Mayers did not want to leave the mound. “I wanted to finish this whole game,” he said.

In the seventh, Jake Mayers and the Hawks made sure that Hanover advanced to the schools’ first state semifinal by taking down the order. Mayers struck out Owens then Hanover’s Bryan Johansen made an athletic belly-flop diving catch in center to take out Halley. Driss Bernoussi then flew out to left to end the game.

On offense, the Hawks came out with bats on fire keeping Bruins’ pitcher Brian Derner off balance from the start. With one out, Jeb Weymouth singled to short then Jake Mayers joined him on base after being hit by a pitch.

Following an out from Erb, Laine Denton was intentionally walked to load the bases bringing Eric Mayers to the plate. Mayers nearly took the ball out of the part but gave the Hawks all the runs they needed to win.

Denton added one more in the bottom of the third with a solo home run over the center field wall for a 4-0 lead. It was Denton’s third home run in the past three games.

All year long Dragum felt as if his Hawks had the potential to make history and he found it gratifying that his predictions have held true by surpassing the mark set by the 2005 Hanover team. “With this senior group, we felt it could be a year that could be special,” he said. “One of their team goals, and I think I’ve said this before, was to reset the standard for this team as opposed to the 2005 team, which the coaches compare to more the work ethic than the wins and losses. But these guys they put the work in and they’ve answered the bell almost every single time this year.”

“That’s the goal we were trying to set at the beginning of the year,” Jake Mayers said. “That’s what we wanted to do.”

For Eric Mayers there are also thoughts of future Hanover teams.  “It’s always good to reset the standard and be a role model for the years to come,” he said. “We may not have another team do this for another six years or so. (Coach Dragum) has always talked about Kevin Light, all those guys and Patrick Long and what he would have done in this or whatever, stuff like that. It’s nice for him to put our names in there now.”

Hanover advances to play Cox in the state semifinal on Friday at 7 p.m. at Westfield High School in Chantilly. Cox defeated Battlefield 6-1 to reach the semifinal game.

Lake Braddock .................. 000 000 0—0 4 0
Hanover….......................... 301 000 x—4 6 1
Derner and Weidinger; J. Mayers and Weymouth.
HR: H: Denton.